


Change

by Lilnerd3696



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Body Horror, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, KEITH DESERVES HAPPINESS, explicit may seem a bit much but better to be safe than sorry, honestly i dont think its as bad as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9692093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilnerd3696/pseuds/Lilnerd3696
Summary: Keith can't sleep.------AU set in Season One, or Season Two before Keith finds out he's a Galra.I don't even know what this is don't ask me.





	

Keith couldn’t sleep.

His room was freezing. Colder than his shack had been in the cold desert night, colder than the snowy mountain Shiro had once dragged him up. Shivering, he curled up tighter underneath the fortress of blankets piled on his bed. The movement shifted the blankets and a ice cold breeze ran down his back. Keith growled and shoved the blankets off him as he sat up. The feeling of the burning cold seeping through his socks briefly made him reconsider getting up, but he stood up anyway and awkwardly scooped up his blankets and pillows.

The door to his room hissed open as he approached it, revealing an empty and even colder hallway. He strode down the hall and into the elevator, pushing the button to the engine room. _Engines produce heat right?_ Keith reasoned.

What little warmth he had managed to get in his room had left as soon as he’d gotten up, and Keith was pretty sure his teeth were chattering, which he didn’t think happened outside of cartoons or shitty writing. When the doors finally opened to let a blast of heat flood into the elevator Keith almost cried. The engine room was loud, and probably not safe, but he didn’t care. He was warm.

He spotted a relatively safe corner nowhere near anything that moved or looked important and dumped his blankets and pillows on the ground, before burrowing underneath them and tangling himself up in their warmth.

\------------

Keith woke up when his makeshift fortress moved. Caught by surprise, he snarled and grabbed the shifting blankets, yanking them back towards him. He heard someone yelp like a dog that’d had its tail stepped on, and then the shuffling of footsteps.

“Keith? Are you okay?”  
  
_Shiro,_ Keith realised, recognising the voice.

“He _growled_ at me!” Someone -Lance, Keith assumed- whined. “Who _growls_ at people?”

Keith curled up, twisting the blanket tighter around himself, trying to say ‘leave me alone’ without actually saying it aloud. He was still pleasantly warm, but his head was feeling fuzzy, and his skin prickled uncomfortably.

“Keith?” Shiro repeated, concern in his voice. Keith knew he should probably answer, but his mouth was numb and tingly, and his head pounded, and he’d much rather go to sleep than talk at the moment…

\------------

“...should we do? This isn’t normal behaviour for Keith. He’s never done anything like this before.”

Keith drifted back into consciousness, still wrapped in blankets, and still in the engine room if the heat was anything to go by.

“I don't think there’s anything we can do, to be honest. If I could get a scan of him I would be able to see if he’s sick, or what he’s sick _with_ , but we can’t get near him!”

_Shiro? Coran?_

“I could try get him out again-”

Keith didn’t hear the rest. The dull thudding in his head sharpened, intensified, till he was clutching his head, aching fingers buried in thick, unfamiliar hair. Every hair follicle, every pore, seemed to burn him, from the outside in. A whine of pain escaped from a mouth full of too sharp teeth, and he shuddered.

“Keith!”

Hands were suddenly on him, trying to untangle him from the blankets, and he growled again, a low guttural growl that rumbled painfully in his chest.

“Wh-”

Panic replaced pain as Keith leapt up, a blanket still wrapped around him. He bolted for the elevator, relying on memory and what he could see through the gaps in the blanket to ensure he didn’t trip. He slammed into Shiro, the Black Paladin losing his balance and crashing to the floor as Keith avoided Coran’s attempt to grab him. The blanket started slipping, and Keith dived into the elevator before repeatedly hit the ‘close doors’ button.

Shiro called Keith’s name once more as the doors closed, but Keith didn’t answer, the pain crawling across his skin already returning. He hit the button for the floor the Paladins’ rooms were in, then let the blanket drop to the floor. Purple fur covered his hand, except for a few patches of still human skin. Even as he watched, the fur spread over the burning patches. He had long, sharp claws growing out of bloody, sensitive fingers. His head felt misshapen, his mouth tasted like metal, and he was scared.

He was _terrified_.

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open to reveal an empty corridor. Keith stumbled out of the elevator, leaving the blanket behind. He used the wall to support himself as he made his way to his room, leaving blood from his still bleeding hands smeared across the wall. Despite his best efforts, he also left blood on the panel the allowed him into his room, and Keith felt a brief flash of pity for whoever would have to clean it up.

There were no pillows or blankets on his bed, but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t here for his bed. With aching hands he tugged at the grate that covered the vent in his room. When he managed to rip it off he threw it behind him, then pulled himself up into the ventilation shaft. They’d know he was in the vents, but it would be harder to find him, to drag him out. To see what he’d become.

A _Galra._

Keith felt dizzy, felt like he was going to throw up, but he ignored it, pulling himself further into the walls of the castle.

\--------------------

 _Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,_ Keith thought. He was in a cul-de-sac of sorts, a vent that widened slightly and went to nowhere. It probably wasn’t a good idea to stay somewhere that only had one entrance or exit, but he didn’t feel safe just in the vents, where he could be approached from two ends.

His self exile went well at first, except for the excruciating pain in what seemed like every cell in his body. His fingers stopped bleeding, his headache lessened, and his skin stopped burning, although he suspected that was only because the fur had covered every part of his skin.

But soon his insides had started to twist, his back throbbed in agony every time he moved, his eyesight deteriorated until Keith wasn't sure if he'd be able to tell Hunk from Pidge if one of them appeared in the entrance to vents (although he doubted Hunk would be able to get into the vents).

Keith suddenly realized that he didn't know what was wrong with him. He knew _what_ was happening, but he didn't know what was _causing it._ Was it a poison? A cruel experiment of Haggar’s? If it was, why was it only affecting him? _Was_ it just him it was affecting?

Keith didn't know.

\------------

It was a few- minutes? hours? days? -before something happened. Banging. And talking.

“-checked this area before, Hunk. It was one of the first areas I checked, because it's close to the kitchen. Yes, I know none of the food is missing, but I find it hard to believe he's gone this long without eating. Fine- I don't _want_ to believe he's gone this long with eating."

 _Food?_ How long _had_ it been since he'd eaten?

How long had he been in here?

Pidge (it had to be Pidge, he recognized their voice, their worried tone they only got when talking get about making it out of a battle alive, or when talking about their family) seemed to be moving closer. Their voice grew louder, as did the banging.

“A dead end? I didn't think Alteans would have dead ends in ventilation shafts. They don't seem to be the type to waste space.”

Pidge was going to find him. Was going to _see_ him. Shouldn’t he be scared? Shouldn't he be running? At least moving? He shifted a bit, just to see if he could make a break for it, and ended up biting the collar of his jacket to muffle the involuntary sob of pain.

“Hang on Hunk, I think I heard something.”

Keith tried moving further away from the entrance to his hideout. Pidge was going to find him, that was certain. That didn't mean he had to make it easy for them to get him out of the vents, or for them to-

He gasped as his spine sent shocks of pain through his body, making him forget about Pidge, about biting down on his jacket. Tears appeared in his eyes as he waited for the aftershocks to end.

“Keith? You there?”

Keith swallowed, admitting defeat. He closed his eyes and wet his dry, cracked lips.

“No,” he croaked out, and Pidge’s snort almost made it worth forcing that single word out through his wrecked throat.

“He’s here, and showing a sense of humor,” Keith heard Pidge inform Hunk. “But he sounds like shit so you might want to get a cryopod ready.”

Keith wheezed out a laugh. ‘Might’.

Pidge started moving again. “Where's the closest exit from the dead end? Because I'm not going to drag him all the way to the med bay through the vents, La-”

They'd found him. Keith didn't even have to open his eyes to know, but he opened them regardless. Pidge was staring at him in horror (probably. He couldn’t tell, but what else could they be staring at, and what else could they look at him with?), and he didn't blame them. What a sight he must make; mostly Galra, possibly fully Galra, covered in his own blood, and lying sprawled in a ventilation shaft.

“Hey Hunk?” Keith saw Pidge grab at the entrance’s ‘door frame’ to steady themself. “We're definitely going to need a cryopod. And a stretcher.”

\-----------

He didn't remember much after that. He remembered biting the collar of his jacket so hard he bit _through_ it as he crawled through the vents after Pidge. He remembers falling out of the vents, someone catching him, someone swearing. He… doesn't remember anything after that.

\-----------

When Keith wakes up he's falling again, and he has a brief second of panic before strong arms catch him. Everything's still a little blurry, growing clearer by the second, but Keith didn't need to see who caught him to know it was Shiro. He clutches onto his older brother like he's a lifeline, like he's 13 again and Shiro and his parents are showing him the adoption papers, like he's 10 with nowhere to go and no one to love him or even like him and Shiro just asked if Keith would like to be friends. Like he’s 18 and Shiro’s back from the dead, battered, bruised, and scarred, but _alive._

He feels the others crowd around him, Pidge squeezing in between him and Shiro, Lance and Hunk coming in from the sides to smother all three of them in giant hug. A hand rests in the middle of his back, another ruffles his hair. It’s probably as close as Allura and Coran can get when he’s surrounded like this.

“Don’t pull that shit ever again you idiot,” Pidge mumbled into Keith’s chest, and everyone wrapped around him agrees, even Keith. He knows this is going to take a while to get used to, and his body still aches from _whatever_ happened. But in this moment, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that the hands grasping at Shiro’s shirt aren’t a human hue, that the tears turning his vision blurry again are an endless glowing yellow, that the smile on his face is showing sharp fangs that wouldn’t look out of place on a shitty supernatural show.

Because if his team hadn’t left him because of _this,_ well.  
He didn’t think they ever would.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask how this happened, but this was actually supposed to be fluff.


End file.
